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COLLEGES; For Athletics at Michigan, Stability No Longer Rules

The University of Michigan, whose athletic department has long been considered among the most successful and stable in the country, is gearing up to hire its fifth athletic director in 12 years.

Tom Goss, a former Wolverine football player who became athletic director in 1997, resigned under pressure last week. While both Goss and Michigan's president, Lee Bollinger, declined to explain why Goss was stepping down, university officials had clearly grown tired of what they viewed as serious mismanagement of the athletic department, whose $38 million annual budget includes a large deficit. Further, the men's basketball team has undergone several investigations by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Bollinger said in a news conference that the reasons for Goss's resignation were ''too complex for any kind of simple statement.''

But the pressure had clearly been mounting on Goss in recent weeks, reflecting continuing strains in an athletic program that was once a national model. From 1921 to 1988, Michigan had only three athletic directors. But since Don Canham retired in 1988, the department has been run by a succession of directors, most of whose tenures were marked by the arrest of athletes for minor crimes and accusations of illegal gifts to athletes from boosters.

During Goss's 29-month term, the athletic department ran up a $3.9 million deficit, an N.C.A.A. investigation of the men's basketball team that began in 1997 has still not been resolved and new problems have overtaken the basketball team in the last few months. The N.C.A.A. gave a six-game suspension earlier this month to guard Jamal Crawford, a star freshman, because of gifts he received from a business executive while attending Rainier Beach High School in Seattle.

Bollinger implied that Crawford's suspension sealed Goss's fate. Bollinger apparently was upset that he first learned about the investigation of Crawford when his suspension was announced on a national television broadcast of a Michigan-Michigan State game on Feb. 1, months after the athletic department had first begun looking into questions about the car Crawford brought with him to campus.

''The president must be notified, there is no doubt about that,'' Bollinger told a reporter for The Ann Arbor News a few minutes after Goss announced his resignation.

Crawford, the basketball team's scoring leader, received free housing, money and cars from the executive, Barry Henthorn, who says he is not an agent and has no financial interest in Crawford's basketball career.

Henthorn also contends that Michigan's basketball coaches ''were aware from Day 1'' of his support for Crawford. In addition to suspending Crawford, the N.C.A.A. ordered him to pay back more than $15,000 in gifts from Henthorn. The N.C.A.A. is continuing its investigation of this and other matters involving the Michigan basketball team, some of which predate Goss's arrival.

The suspension followed reports in local newspapers last month that another basketball player, Brandon Smith, was accused by a female student of stealing a calculator, watch and electronic organizer from her in November. According to a police report, Michigan's head basketball coach, Brian Ellerbe, persuaded Smith to return the items and prevailed on the student to drop the complaint. Ellerbe has acknowledged intervening with Smith to have items returned but has denied persuading the student to drop the complaint. Smith has not commented on the matter.

Bollinger apparently concluded that Goss had lost control of the athletic department's finances and its basketball program. Even Goss's supporters acknowledge that he made mistakes, but they say the university should have given him more time to grow in the job.

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''He was an outstanding individual and a good A.D.,'' said Canham, who spent two decades as Michigan's athletic director. ''He could make decisions, he had a vision, he was very popular with the coaches -- just what the university needed. From the beginning, the guy had some problems, no question about that, but I think his biggest was p.r. He didn't defend himself when he should have.''

Canham and some other former members of the athletic department think that Goss's problems are part of what they view as a decadelong effort to limit the athletic department's autonomy.

''They say it's more important nowadays to have a business background than an athletic one,'' said Canham, who had both. ''I disagree. You have to have an athletic background first, or you don't know what's going on.''

But James Duderstadt, a former Michigan president, argued that athletic departments have become such complex enterprises that experienced administrators are needed to oversee them. ''To run this, you need someone with strong financial, management and personnel expertise,'' he said. ''Most coaches simply don't have the expertise to handle that anymore.''

Goss, who had worked primarily as an executive in soft-drink companies, appeared to fit the mold of the new style of athletic director when Bollinger hired him in September 1997.

But many of the controversies that defined his short tenure could be traced to Goss's own management decisions. He spent $8 million on Internet equipment and projects. The department spent more than $600,000 on a Web site that generated only $20,000 in advertising revenue.

Despite taking in record revenues, the athletic department ran a deficit. While not the department's first operating deficit, it was by far the largest and most embarrassing.

Then there was the basketball team, a contentious issue from the moment Goss arrived. In his fifth week on the job, Goss dismissed Steve Fisher, the popular basketball coach under whom Michigan had won the N.C.A.A. championship in 1989. Fisher was let go after the N.C.A.A. began investigating allegations that a booster, who had often received free basketball tickets from Fisher, had given gifts to players. The N.C.A.A. and Federal Bureau of Investigation are still investigating.

Goss elevated Ellerbe to interim head coach of the basketball team. He had been a Michigan assistant for only one year, and before that he was head coach for three years at tiny Loyola College of Maryland, where he compiled a 34-47 record. After Michigan finished 29-9 and won the inaugural Big Ten basketball tournament, Goss named Ellerbe the permanent head coach. The team slipped to 12-19 last season, but Ellerbe brought in a stellar recruiting class for this season, including Crawford, rated one of the nation's top 10 high school players last year. The team has lost all four games since Crawford's suspension and is now 12-9, with a 3-7 record in the Big Ten.

In stepping down, effective at the end of March, Goss said at a news conference, ''The positives outweigh the negatives.''

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A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2000, on Page D00006 of the National edition with the headline: COLLEGES; For Athletics at Michigan, Stability No Longer Rules. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe